Manjeet Chhillar strikes form as Jaipur cruise home

U Mumba’s Super Playoffs hopes are all but over after a 36-32 defeat against home team Jaipur Pink Panthers at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium on Saturday. Captain Manjeet Chhillar was back to his old lethal self and picked up 6 tackle points for his efforts against the strong U Mumba raiders. Fellow senior Jasvir Singh too returned to form and finished just one point shy of a super 10.

Pawan Kumar gave his side an early 4-1 lead in the 4^th minute through a 2-point raid. But the U Mumba defence consistently outdid that of Jaipur enabling them to be within touching distance of Jaipur at 5-6 in the 7^th minute. Kashiling Adake kept picking up points to keep U Mumba in the hunt but Jaipur always constantly managed to keep their noses ahead through the defensive prowess of Chhillar.

Adake kept putting the pressure on though and quickly erased the lead to hand Jaipur their first All–Out of the night in the 15th minute to put U Mumba 16-10 ahead. One-Man-Army Chhillar then hit top gear and gave nothing away to the U Mumba raider from there. He reached his High 5 via a successful tackle on Adake and brought the deficit down to one point as the two sides went into half time with the score favouring U Mumba 16-15.

It didn’t take Jaipur long to equalise in the second half as they quickly snapped up U Mumba captain Anup Kumar in his first raid of the half. From there Jasvir took charge and executed a brilliant raid to inflict an All-Out back on U Mumba and put his side 20-16 ahead. Captain Cool Anup tried hard to draw his side abreast but young Pawan looked a different raider in the second half and kept running away with quick points in successive raids. He brought U Mumba to the brink of another All-Out and Jasvir completed the formalities to hand U Mumba a second All-Out and open up a 10-point lead for Jaipur.

It was a contest of equals from there but the big lead gave Jaipur an advantage as they had to only kill time from there. Chhillar found support in Somvir Shekhar and the duo kept the U Mumba raiders from putting in any big raids and eventually helped Jaipur emerge victorious.

Check out our snapshots from this match here.